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Excerpt from "Naked Lunch" by William S. Burroughs - First Published 1959
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Now a word about the parties of Interzone....
It will be immediately clear that the Liquefation Party is, except for one
man, entirely composed of dupes, it not being clear until the final
absorption who is whose dupe....The Liquefactionists are much given to every
form of perversion, especially sado-masochistic practices....
Liquefactionists in general know what the score is. The Senders, on the
other hand, are notorious for their ignorance of the nature and terminal
state of sending, for barbarous and self-righteous manners, and for rabid
fear of FACT-. It was only the intervention of the Factualists that prevented
the Senders from putting Einstein in an institution and destroying his
theory. It may be said that only a very few Senders know what they are doing
and these top Senders are the most evil and dangerous men in the world. . . .
Techniques of Sending were crude at first. Fadeout to the National Electronic
Conference in Chicago.
The Conferents are putting on their overcoats....The speaker talks in a
flat shopgirl voice:
"In closing, I want to sound a word of warning. . . .The logical extension
of encephalographic research is biocontol; that is control of physical
movement, mental processes, emotional reactions and APPARENT sensory
impressions by means of bioelectric signals injected into the nervous system
of the subject."
"Louder and funnier!" The conferents are trouping out in clouds of dust.
"Shortly after the birth a surgeon could install connections in the brain. A
miniature radio receiver could be plugged in and the subject controlled from
State-controlled transmitters."
Dust settles through the windless air of a vast empty hall - smell of hot
iron and steam; a radiator sings in the distance....The Speaker shuffles his
notes and blows dust off them....
"The biocontrol apparatus is prototype of one-way telepathic control. The
subject could be rendered susceptible to the transmitter by drugs or other
processing without installing any apparatus. Ultimately the Senders will use
telepathic transmitting exclusively. . . . Ever dig the Mayan codices? I
figure it like this: the priests-about one per cent of population-made with
one-way telepathic broadcasts instructing the workers what to feel and
when....A telepathic sender has to send all the time. He can never receive,
because if he receives that means someone else has feelings of his own could
louse up his continuity. The sender has to send all the time, but he can't
ever recharge himself by contact. Sooner or later he's got no feelings to
send. You can't have feelings alone. Not alone like the Sender is alone - and
you dig there can only be one Sender at one place-time....Finally the screen
goes dead....The Sender has turned into a huge centipede....So the workers
come in on the beam and burn the centipede and elect a new Sender by
consensus of the general will....The Mayans were limited by isolation....Now
one Sender could control the planet.... You see control can never be a means
to any practical end....It can never be a means to anything other but more
control...Like junk..." The Divisionists occupy a mid-way position, could in
fact be termed moderates....They are called Divisionists because they
literally divide. They cut off tiny bits of their flesh and grow exact
replicas of themselves in embryo jelly. It seems probable, unless the process
of division is halted, that eventually there will be only one replica of one
sex on the planet: that is one person in the world with millions of separate
bodies....Are these bodies actually independant, and could they in time
develop varied characteristics? I doubt it. Replicas must periodically
recharge with the Mother Cell. This is an article of faith with the
Divisionists, who live in fear of a replica revolution....Some Divisionists
think that the process can be halted short of the eventual monopoly of one
replica. They say: "Just let me plant a few more replicas all over so I won't
be lonely when I travel...And we must strictly control the division of
Undesireables...." Every replica but your own is eventually an
"Undesireable." Of course if someone starts inundating an area with Identical
Replicas, everyone knows what is going on. The other citizens are subject to
declare a "Schluppit" (wholesale massacre of all identifiable replicas). To
avoid extermination of their replicas, citizens dye, distort, and alter them
with face and body molds. Only the most abandoned and shameless characters
venture to manufacture I.R.'s- Identical Replicas.
A cretinous albino Caid, product of a long line of recessive genes (tiny
toothless mouth lined with black hairs, body of a huge crab, claws instead of
arms, eyes projected on stalks) accumulated 20,000 I.R.s. "As far as the eye
can see, nothing but replicas," he says, crawling around on his terrace and
speaking in strange insect chirps. "I don't have to skulk around like a
nameless asshole growing replicas in my cesspool and sneaking them out
disguised as plumbers and delivery men....My replicas don't have their
dazzling beauty marred by plastic surgery and barbarous dye and bleach
processes. They stand forth naked in the sun for all to see, in their
incandescent loveliness of body, face and soul. I have made them in my image
and enjoined them to increase and multiply geometric for they shall inherit
the earth."
Since there is no sure way to detect a disguised replica (though every
Divisionist has some method he considers infallible) the Divisionists are
hysterically paranoid. If some citizen ventures to express a liberal opinion,
another citizen invariably snarls: "What are you? Some stinking Nigger's
bleached-out replica?"
The casualties in barroom fights are staggering. In fact the fear of Negro
replicas - which may be blond and blue-eyed - has depopulated whole regions.
The Divisionists are all latent or overt homosexuals. Evil old queens tell
the young boys: "If you go with a woman your replicas won't grow." And
citizens are forever putting the hex on someone else's replica cultures.
Cries of: "Hex my culture will you, Biddy Blair!" followed by sound effects
of mayhem, continually ring through the quarter.... The Divisionists are much
given to the practice of black magic in general, and they have innumerable
formulas of varying efficacy for destroying the Mother Cell, also known as
the Protoplasm Daddy, by torturing or killing a captured replica.... The
authorities have finally given up the attempt to control, among the
Divisionists, the crimes of murder and unlicensed production of replicas. But
they do stage pre-election raids and destroy vast replica cultures in the
mountainous regions of the Zone where replica moonshiners hole up.
Sex with a replica is strictly forbidden and almost universally practised.
There are queer bars where shameless citizens openly consort with their
replicas. House detectives stick their heads into hotel rooms saying: "Have
you got a replica in here?"
Bars subject to be inundated by low class replica lovers put up signs in
ditto marks: """"s Will Not Be Served Here.... It may be said that the
average Divisionist lives in a continual crisis of fear and rage, unable to
achieve either the self-righteous complacency of the Senders or the relaxed
depravity of the Liquefactionists.... However the parties are not in practice
separate but blend in all combinations. The Factualists are
Anti-Liquefactionist, Anti-Divisionist, and above all Anti-Sender.
Bulletin of the Coordinate Factualist on the subject of replicas: "We must
reject the facile solution of flooding the planet with 'desirable replicas.'
It is highly doubtful if there are any desirable replicas, such creatures
constituting an attempt to circumvent process and change. Even the most
intelligent and genetically perfect replicas would in all probability
constitute an unspeakable menace to life on this planet. . . ."
T.B-Tenative Bulletin-Liquefaction: "We must not reject or deny our
protoplasmic core, striving at all time to maintain a maximum of flexibility
without falling into the morass of liquefaction. . . ." Tentative and
Incomplete Bulletin: "Emphatically we do not oppose telepathic research. In
fact, telepathy properly used and understood could be the ultimate defense
against any form of organized coercion or tyranny on the part of pressure
groups or individual control addicts. We oppose, as we oppose atomic war, the
use of such knowledge to control, coerce, debase, exploit or annihilate the
individuality of another living creature. Telepathy is not, by its nature, a
one-way process. To attempt to set up a one-way telepathic broadcast must be
regarded as an unqualified evil...."
D.B-Definitive Bulletin: "The Sender will be defined by negatives. A low
pressure area, a sucking emptiness. He will be portentiously anonymous,
faceless, colorless. He will - probably - be born with smooth disks of skin
instead of eyes. He always knows where is is going like a virus knows. He
doesn't need eyes."
"Couldn't there be more than one Sender?"
"Oh yes, many of them at first. But not for long. Some maudlin citizens
will think that they can send something edifying, not realizing that sending
IS evil. Scientists will say: 'Sending is like atomic power....If properly
harnessed.' At this point an anal technician mixes a bicarbonate of soda and
pulls the switch that reduces the earth to cosmic dust. ('Belch ... They'll
hear this fart on Jupiter.') ...Artists will confuse sending with creation.
They will camp around screeching 'A new medium' until their ratings drop off.
. . . Philosphers will beat around the ends and means hassle not knowing that
SENDING CAN NEVER BE A MEANS TO ANYTHING BUT MORE SENDING, Like Junk. Try
using junk as a means to something else. . . . Some citizens with 'Coca Cola
and aspirin' control habits will be talking about the evil glamor of sending.
But no one will talk about anything very long. The Sender, he don't like
talking."
The sender is not a human individual. . . . It is the Human Virus. (All
viruses are deteriorated cells leading a parasitic existence....They have
specific affinity for the Mother Cell; thus deteriorated liver cells seek the
home place of hepatitis, etc. So every species has a Master Virus:
Deteriorated Image of that species.)
The broken image of Man moves in minute by minute and cell by cell....
Poverty, hatred, war, police-criminals, bureaucracy, insanity, all symptoms
of The Human Virus.
The Human Virus can now be isolated and treated.
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Excerpt from "Naked Lunch" by William S. Burroughs
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"Senators leap up and bray for the Death Penalty with inflexible authority of
virus yen. . . . Death for dope fiends, death for sex queens (I mean fiends)
death for the psychopath who offends the cowed and graceless flesh with
broken animal innocence of lithe movement. . . .
The black wind sock of death undulates over the land, feeling, smelling for
the crime of separate life, movers of the fear-frozen flesh shivering under a
vast probability curve. . . .
Population blocks disappear in a checker game of genocide. . . . any number
can play. . . .
The Liberal Press and The Press Not So Liberal and The Press Reactionary
Scream approval: "Above all the myth of other-level experience must be
eradicated...." And speak darky of certain harsh realities . . . cows with
the aftosa . . . prophylaxis. . . .
Power groups of the world frantically cut lines of connection. . . .
The Planet drifts to random insect doom. . . ."